The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a federal appeals court to reject legal challenges to a law requiring China-based company ByteDance to sell the assets of the TikTok app in the United States by January 19 or face a ban. The department stated in its request, "TikTok's ownership by a Chinese entity poses a serious threat to national security due to its ability to access extensive personal data on Americans."
The department further added, "The serious threat to national security posed by TikTok is real... TikTok provides the Chinese government with means to undermine U.S. national security in two major ways: data collection and covert manipulation of content."
The Biden administration urged the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance, as well as a group of TikTok content creators, aimed at preventing the enactment of the law that could ban the app used by 170 million Americans.
TikTok has consistently denied that it will share American users' data with China or manipulate video outcomes. The Justice Department's lawsuit details widespread national security concerns regarding ByteDance's ownership of TikTok. The government stated, "China's long-term geopolitical strategy includes developing and pre-positioning assets for deployment at opportune moments."
In a separate announcement, the government acknowledged it has no information about the Chinese government obtaining data from U.S. TikTok users but noted that the risk of such an occurrence is extremely high. It added, "The United States is not obligated to wait until its foreign adversary takes specific harmful actions before responding to the threat."
